


Mindless

by Aki_Saiko (saikowrites)



Series: Writober 2019 [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akira struggles with normal life and bad hometown relationships, Gen, Inktober 2019, Lots of headcanon, Post-Canon, Slightly implied AkeShu but only because I ship them to death, Stream of Consciousness, Writober 2019, mindless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 03:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20867741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saikowrites/pseuds/Aki_Saiko
Summary: "He had started wearing his glasses again, deeply grateful to Futaba for not letting him abandon them in the attic. He had shrugged at his father pointing out that Akira had never had bad eyesight. Akira hadn’t cared. Those glasses had been his mask for a year: he wouldn’t have minded wearing them for another 12 months. "WRITOBER 2019 | Day 2: Mindless | Based on the official Inktober 2019 prompt list.





	Mindless

**Author's Note:**

> Post-canon!Akira is my comfortable place in bad days and bad thoughts, so yay, I wanted to show my appreciacion for him.  
I have two major headcanons about his life in his hometown: a lot of personal struggling and no-good family relationships. I would have liked to explore them a bit more but life exists and I don't have much free time.

Rain was falling heavy against the window in front of him, soothing the headache that wouldn’t leave his temples. Akira sighed and rubbed his eyes, his glasses tossed far away from books and squared notebook, near the edge of the desk. He wasn’t bad at math, never been, but limits were proving a though opponent. As much as he liked abstraction and complicated theories, he found that limits were a concept just too blurry for him to fully grasp it.

He stretched, shifting position on the chair to find a more comfortable one, almost able to hear his mother scolding him for not sitting properly. He grabbed the papers with his messy notes from classes, read and re-read them for the millionth time, irritation building in his stomach as _something_ was still missing in his frame of the topic. He couldn’t figure out what it was. 

Morgana jumped on the desk and unceremoniously put his paws over the scattered homework. He purred and nuzzled on Akira’s cheek and hear. “You seem to struggle more than usual with this” he said.

“Yeah. I might have to ask Makoto to lend a hand this time.”

He scratched Mona’s head between the hears and got a meow in response.

“You’re becoming more and more an actual cat, Mona” Akira joked, even now capable of picturing in detail all the expressions Mona would have made had he still possessed his Metaverse form. The one in front of him would have been annoyance mixed with discomfort and resignation.

Akira lifted him from the papers and lowered him near the floor, letting him jump away from his hands. He loved Morgana beyond imagination, his only tangible link with the life he had spent in Tokyo – but he needed to study. Exams were due in less than two weeks and he couldn’t afford his grades to drop.

“Are you sure you don’t need a break? Are you all right?” the cat asked.

Akira shrugged. “I’m fine, I can manage.”

He wasn’t ‘fine’, but he wasn’t ‘bad’ either. He lived his new-old life just passing through things without letting ‘things’ get through him. He was numb, only half looking and half hearing everything that wasn’t related to school subjects and grades. Some days, he buried his head in the pillow without even being able to remember exactly what happened mere hours before.

He was enduring, doing tasks without commitment and fighting loneliness with intense sessions of Mona cuddling and Skype calls to one or more of the Thieves. Akira’s hometown was small and narrow-minded, he had never expected to be able to come back from a one-year probation and be welcomed as if nothing had happened. But his last first day of high school had revealed worse than a nightmare, reviving all he went through at Shujin. Except, this time the ones mocking him and spreading lies about him hadn’t been strangers: they were people he knew, with whom he’d spent his mornings, his afternoons, his all-nighters before tests.

Akira had sort of figured a scenario like that one. It hadn’t been enough. Actually staying in class without Morgana under his desk, desperately trying to follow the lessons despite the worried looks and the whispers, had been on a whole another level of stress. He had come back home with a lump in his throat, had climbed the stairs that were not Leblanc’s ones and had taken refuge in his old room that was no attic.

By the time the sick feeling in his stomach had quieted, only anger was left in his heart, his fingers itching. He had gone trough much worse things. He’d been almost killed, arrested (three times) and tortured, had spent months in juvenile. He hadn’t cried when police drugged him and beat him, hadn’t let any of his mourning slip off his face when he had to leave Akechi behind those shutters, hadn’t even screamed when his friends and partners had begun to disappear in the middle of a Shibuya sidewalk.

Akira had seen hell in Mementos and had shot a god in the face. No petty comments, no glares, no gossip would have gotten to him. Being them from teachers, acquaintances, classmates or his parents.

He had started wearing his glasses again, deeply grateful to Futaba for not letting him abandon them in the attic. He had shrugged at his father pointing out that Akira had never had bad eyesight. Akira hadn’t cared. Those glasses had been his mask for a year: he wouldn’t have minded wearing them for another 12 months.

Another rub of his eyes, another tugging at his messy curls, and Akira wished he could shrug at limits and function graphics as he did with annoying comments and invasive questions.

He breathed. No more distraction.

_Study hard. Attend prep school and score well in test simulations. Get in a good university in Tokyo and leave this town for good._

Loneliness was an ugly beast, so much more after a year surrounded by people who relied on him and cared for him. But he had Mona. And there still was job to be done.

He had thought of his glasses as his mask. They could also be as Joker’s coat: fancy, and impenetrable. Everything slid on Joker’s coat: bullets, attacks, death threats. And provincial townspeople.

_Get in a good university in Tokyo and leave this town for good._

Akira reached for his glasses and grabbed the pencil, every other thing in the world shut out of his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Previous work in the collection: Persona 5 - Ann/Ryuji - Ring  
Next one in the collection will be: Persona 5 - ShuAke


End file.
